Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Red Pyramid: starts with a blast. Carter and Sadie visit the
Egyptian exhibit at the British Museum where their father touches the Rosetta
stone, unleashing the Egyptian gods into the world again. We find out the
divine need mortal vessels to interact with the world, a major difference from
the Percy Jackson books. They must stop Set from gaining control of the world
with his Red Pyramid, which is his seat of power.

Throne of Fire: Carter and Sadie team up with new recruits
with magical powers to find Ra and restore him to his rightful place. Things
don’t go to plan, sacrifices are made, hearts broken, and secrets revealed.

Serpents Shadow: the Kane kids and friends must do battle
with Apophis to restore order to the world while his agents try to destroy
their homes.

Al in all the Kane books are fun but were not as well liked
by most of the readers I walked with, the Egyptian myths are great but get
watered down a bit more than the Greek myth of the Percy books. There is not as
much cultural cross over to engage the readers, growing up the only experiences
I had with the myths were being terrified at the museum by the mummies and
seeing them chase Shaggy and Scooby, whereas the Greek monsters are everywhere
in American culture. The children’s books are starting to catch up lore wise,
the 39 clues series takes us to Egypt in their book Beyond the Grave by Watson
and the Tombquest series by Northrop where the main character dies and his
mother brings him back to life using the Lost spells from the book of the dead.

Rick Riordan did write three crossover short stories. Son of
Sobek, Percy and Carter meet up and fight a giant crocodile as well as have a
scuffle themselves. Staff of Serapis where Annabeth and Sadie fight against a
old foe using both Greek and Egyptian magic. And Crown of Ptolemy where all
four children team up and try to bash evil in the face, the short stories are
amazing because it combines both myth structures into a shared world and has
future ramifications.

The next book Rick Riordan is releasing is Magnus Chase
and the Gods of Asgard book one: the Sword of Summer. I am a bit excited about
this new series, Greek myth has always been my favorite but Nordic myth is my
runner up. We should be seeing loads of giants and trolls as well as more crossovers
with the other myths, Magnus and Annabeth are cousins and from the preview
chapter it seems she is trying to find him.

Bringing mythology to the classroom is a great idea. It gives
us a glimpse of history as well as helping kids find wonder, giving them both
heroes and monsters they will remember for a lifetime. Egyptian and Greek
influences can be found everywhere in our modern world from architecture to
video games, to terrible music videos. I realized late in the game my intense
love of monsters and myth as far as classes went in college but now most of my
art and creative energy is directed towards myth and making my own stories.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Lost Hero: starts with Jason, a demigod with no memories of
where he came from ending up with Piper and Leo, Two other demigods, who seem
to have their memories modified to remember Jason. They end up in Camp
Halfblood and meet Annabeth who seems to have lost her Percy. After lineages
are sorted out they must travel across the country to save Hera.

Son of Neptune: starts with a familiar narrator, Percy,
having no memory of who he is or where he is from except someone named Annabeth
is important to him. He finds a camp of kids descended from the Roman gods and
goddesses and must help them recover the lost standard of the Roman legion. He
teams up with Frank and Hazel and Nico makes a cameo.

Mark of Athena: Both groups of campers team up head to the
seat of power in ancient Greece, on the way relationships blossom and chaos
abounds.Their main goal is to defeat
Gaia but Annabeth is distracted by the Mark of Athena, a trail of clues left by
the goddess Athena to test her children. This book was fantastic and the year
wait between Mark of Athena and House of Hades was very painful.

House of Hades: Percy and Annabeth fight their way across Tartarus
trying to close the Doors of Death while the others try to find the doors in
the mortal world. Hazel is amazing in this one.

Blood of Olympus: Reunited at last the final confrontation
between the demigods and Gaia is in full swing.Friends are lost and sacrifices made leading to one of the best series
endings I have encountered in quite some time.

The Heroes of Olympus books were better constructed than the
Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. There were more narrators with their
own tales to tell in the world of reconstructed Greek and roman myths, even if
a few of the kids blended together at times. There was more drama, every
demigod has emotional trauma they are working through from their past that
defines them. Hazel had died once already, Leo believed he killed his family
with fire, Frank struggles for identity issues and a severe magical sign of his
own mortality, Piper acts up to get her father’s attention, and Nico is not
only displaced from time but struggles with his own sexuality. All these
characters feel they are flawed or broken, but the tragedies in their past make
them stronger and deeper characters. Leo will always stand out as an all-time
favorite character for me. It is also neat they all are from different cultural
backgrounds and nationalities, Riordan made great choices to try to include as
many different connections with potential readers as possible.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

The first five books are amazing. It will always be one of
my all-time favorite series sold to young adults and is number two only to
Harry Potter. You get a kid with what at first seems to be learning disorders
such as ADHD and dyslexia but it turns out his mind is hardwired to read
ancient Greek and survive odd combat situations. Percy also has a classic bit
of sass when it comes to dealing with others, I found it very relatable. He
does tend to run head first into his problems instead of thinking things
through. He is helped by a fellow demigod Annabeth whom keeps Percy on track
with his missions when he gets distracted by making a funny instead of stabbing
the monsters. He is also helped by Grover, a satyr posing as a student sent to
watch over Percy when he was in the normal world. Grover is pretty much Percy’s
Ron... best friend. The first five books stick with Percy as the narrator.

Lightning Thief: the young boy Percy finds out he is related
to the Greek gods and must help find Zeus’s missing master lightning bolt or
Zeus will go to war with the his other siblings,

Sea of Monsters: Grover has gone missing while searching for
a missing artifact. Percy again breaks the rules again and he and Annabeth go looking
for him with a new Ally, Percy’s half brother.

Titans Curse: Percy must keep a mythical monster from being
sacrificed by the minions of Kronos. We get to meet Bianca and Nico as well as
Thalia.

Battle of the Labyrinth: Percy and crew find an entrance to
the famed Labyrinth and must find a way to stop it from creating passages into
their camp.

The Last Olympian: war has begun, the gods are off fighting
Typhon, an ancient threat to their power. While they are away the minions of Kronos
march on mount Olympus. If Percy and his friends don’t stop Kronos everything
they know and love will be destroyed.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Ruins of Gorlan:
Young boy Will wants to be a knight but, like me, he is small, wiry and weighs
less than the armor he longs to wear. He does however have some skills; he
climbs trees to hide from his bully, he can move unseen in the shadows, and he
is able to make friends easily for an orphan.He does not know what happened to his parents other than his father died
a hero and his mom died shortly after Will was born. He assumes that means his
dad was a knight, hence the knightly aspirations. When he and his fellow wards
must choose professions, he is tested by the strange Ranger, Halt, and proves
he has the skills to be a ranger, but now he must hone those skills. He gets to
ride the shortest ponies of the land, his mount is named Tug, learns
marksmanship with a bow, as well as fighting with a short blade called a Saxe
knife. There are bully situations and solutions, classic good against evil, and
redemption. The end of this book wrecked me.

There
are twelve Rangers Apprentice novels: Ruins
of Gorlan, Burning Bridge, Icebound Land, Battle for Skandia, Sorcerer of the
North, Siege of Macindaw, Erak’s Ransom, Kings of Clonmel, Halts Peril, Emperor
of Nihon-ja, Lost Stories, and The
Royal Ranger.

He
also wrote The Brotherband Chronicles.
These are the stories of a group of young Skandian kids fighting against a
traitor with cameos of characters from Rangers Apprentice.

These
books are Outcasts, The Invaders, The
Hunters, Slaves of Socorro, and
Scorpion Mountain.

This
fall he also is starting a series of Prequel novels about Halt’s youth. The
First book is called The Tournament at
Gorlan.

This
series is amazing for both kids and adults, fans of everything from J. R. R. Tolkien,
to Brian Jaques, to George R. R. Martin. The story switches point of view with
shared chapter narration and has plenty of witty banter to keep me happy. The friendships
are truly what make this series both heartwarming and devastatingly heart breaking.
It deals with identity, addiction, trust and new friendships. As the series progresses, we see young Will
become a hero as well as a man, and Halt go from a dower brooding loner to a
loving, caring, loveable Harrison Ford like scamp. Halt is amazing, in one book
he convinces Horace to joust against lesser lords in a foreign land to oust a
tyrant and in the same book convinces him that the friendly girls working at
the dockside establishment wearing short skirts were messengers. Another cool
part of the series involves the big scary bad guy and his monster legions. The
book starts with him in mid monologue to his nonverbal minions and terrorizing
the land but then shortly after he and his goons are gone. By the end of Book
Two, the heroes have a much greater and scarier foe to face, Humans. Humans are
more monstrous than any imaginary monster we will ever face. Read it and be
hooked. Also Flanagan got back at his readers for badgering him to write more
books after Book Ten. Book Eleven was short stories showing cool parts of post Book
Ten bliss between the characters. Again the fans emailed him relentlessly. Book
Twelve started with the death of a main character and heartbreak of the worst
kind.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan
starts with two “heroes”, one an idealistic swordsman tired of killing and the
other a thief with no qualms with murder, hired to steal a sword from a
chapel.They trip over the dead king and
realize they were set up.Now the duo
must run from the law as well as start a quest that will either destroy a
kingdom or save the world. There are six titles in the series and two prequels
that explain how the heroes meet and how their friendship blossoms. There is an
amazing sense of humor and real character growth over the series as well. At
points Royce will even ask for permission from Hadrian instead of just
murdering someone whom happens to be in his way. The Princess Arista is also
awesome as she grows into her spell casting potential. Of all the characters
Myron is my favorite because we have a similar interest... reading! He is a
monk that remembers every book he has ever read and is in the process of
rewriting every book that belonged in his lost library, also when Hadrian and
Royce need information they turn to Myron, he has knowledge on everything from
lost civilizations, dwarven customs, architecture, to random esoteric facts. I
can relate to that too well.

When I first read these, I
started with Theft of Swords which
contains The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha, continued with Rise of Empire, which contained Nyphron Rising and The Emerald Storm, and finally Heir
of Novron which contained Wintertide
and Percepliquis. It was a new
fantasy series to me, one of my friends (Josh) left in my mailbox at work and
within the first few chapters I had to buy it. After a bit, Sullivan published Crown Tower and Rose and the Thorn which took place before the other titles and we
get to see how the heroes meet and learn more about Gwen, a character that is
very important to the plot that we hardly get to see in the main story. He
changes the roles of many of the typical fantasy races we usually see running
around these days, dwarves are relatively few in number and we only see one
throughout the series, elves live in their sacred realms across the river
beyond the reach of humans, and goblins are terrifying and massive.It was awesome. If you are new to the series
start with Crown Tower, some of the
later events will mean more to you if you read Crown Tower and Rose and the
Thorn first and in the later stories they talk about the events that take
place in the prequels.

He is now working on a new
series about the earlier times in his world as well as a new Hadrian and Royce
novel. Here is his current Kickstarter for The
Death of Dulgath!

About Me

Greetings! I read as much as humanly possible, sometimes enough for three people. I recently worked for a retail environment where books
were all I talked about. The most important thing for me was to make
sure that both kids and adults were getting the best books to read to
keep them reading. Now I am using the knowledge I gained to help share
my favorites with as many people as possible with my blog, Facebook, and soon
Youtube seemed a good place to start. There will be updates during the
week about upcoming videos, books I am reading, and books you should be
reading as well.